I am sorry for the poor man. He is afraid you are angry
with him; he says he promised never to try to see me; that he would not
have come if he had known. I have told him you are not angry; that it is
not his fault; that you will show that you are not angry."
But first of all Brand ushered his guests into the long, low-roofed
chamber, and drew the portieres across the middle, so that Waters might
have an apartment for his luncheon preparations. Then he opened the
letter. Kirski remained at the door, with his cap in his hand.
* * * * *
"My much-esteemed friend,"--Calabressa wrote, in his ornate,
ungrammatical, and phonetic French--"the poor devil who is the bearer of
this letter is known to you, and yet not altogether known to you. You
know something of his conversion from a wild beast into a man--from the
tiger into a devotee; but you do not, my friend, perhaps entirely know
how his life has become absorbed in one worship, one aspiration, one
desire. The means of the conversion, the instrument, you know, have I
not myself before described it to you? The harassed and bleeding heart,
crushed with scorn and filled with despair--how can a man live with that
in his bosom? He wishes to die.
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